LOWELL -- Most people who have ever been treated for breast cancer with chemotherapy could tell you that while it is supposed to cure their illness, it can make them feel even more sick than the cancer did.

Prakash Rai, an assistant professor of chemical engineering at UMass Lowell, is hoping to help change that for patients in the future.

"The problem is, the current chemo drugs can't discriminate between cancer and normal cells," Rai said. "You go in blind, and the drug goes everywhere, so the patient loses weight, throws up or loses hair. That's because you have a drug that is killing everything.

Prakash Rai in his lab at UMass Lowell, where he is researching chemotherapy drugs and how they are delivered. SUN/David H. Brow

A native of Mumbai, India, the 31-year-old has received more than $725,000 from the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health to advance his work creating an imaging agent-enhanced drug-delivery method that allows doctors to target only cancer cells.

The NIH grant is specifically to research drug-delivery systems to treat HER2+ and triple-negative breast cancer, two of the disease's most malignant forms. Rai said the methods he is working on may help decrease a patient's drug dosage and reduce toxic side effects, thus improving survival and overall quality of life.

"That would be a huge benefit for the entire female population," he said.

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Rai's research uses nanotechnology, which figures prominently in UMass Lowell's ongoing efforts to integrate emerging technologies into research and education on campus.

"UML is investing heavily in this field, and I feel lucky to be here at this point in time," he said. "The university is doing so much to try to build a good team that can achieve something that can really benefit patients."

According to estimates by the American Cancer Society, more than 290,000 women were diagnosed with breast cancer, including 40,000 cases that were lethal, in 2012.

The applications Rai and his team are developing are at the forefront of an emerging field of medicine called theranostics, which uses nanotechnology to detect and treat disease simultaneously.

"We're designing two types of particles targeting each type of these cancers," he said. "With imaging technology, you can deliver this drug more effectively. It reduces collateral damage to normal cells."

Rai relocated to Lowell to work for the university in 2012, after previously earning his Ph.D. at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and working for Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

He said while it was useful to get the clinical perspective that came with working directly with patients at the hospital on treatments, he is equally pleased now to work directly with bright young undergraduate students who are assigned to his laboratory, so they can gain experience that will help them to find jobs in the industry or gain entrance into graduate schools.

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